Kael Cor: A Vampire's Awakening Chapter 314 Journey VII : The Forgotten Ones 3

"Kael Cor! We are the Forgotten ones, a mercenary group that has been promised a significant amount of money for your head. Now I'm sure you know the details of the bounty on your head, just come with us peacefully, and you would not be harmed, or we'll beat the shit out of you, if you die in the process, then that's your own business. Half a billion credits is still a lot of money."

I raised an eyebrow and turned to look at Dracula who was standing beside me with a brief look on his face. Soren, on the other hand had a look of anticipation and excitement, the fact we had to run away from our last fight. He really was shaking in anticipation and all with a burning desire to wash away the shame he felt about running away.

The smoke cleared away, I discovered eleven people standing around me and Soren. Dracula had disappeared again, leaving me to deal with the enemies in front of me, alone. But this was not a fight that they would be winning, because right now I was feeling a little bit frustrated and for people who were after my life, I'm not sure I was feeling any bit merciful. So I would not be taken any prisoners.

All eleven of my attackers were wearing battle suits that covered their entire body from head to toe, the battle suits had a silver and red color scheme, with a sigil of Skeleton with only its skull and torso showing. It was crossed over by a sword and a gun.

Well I guess I had to fight these guys, or at the very least they could be some sort of grinding stone for me. I have been training for a while, so let's see how far I've gone in mastering my vampire abilities. I took a deep breath as an area 30 feet in radius covering me and the so called forgotten ones suddenly went dark.

A vampire could control the element of darkness just as easily as we could control blood, so it stands to reason that I could do something like this, I just never had a reason to do so before. And what I was doing was quite simple, using the element of darkness, I had absorbed all the light in my surroundings, making everything darker than night.

And this is when the slaughter started, or at least that's what I thought. I was about to make a move when a grenade launcher was shot towards me. I dodged it, watching the shell go past me, only for it to explode and gravity increased by at least ten times at the spot where I was standing. Because I was not expecting such a move, I was thrown to ground, my face planted into the ground, dirt in my mouth.

"How do you like my specially patented gravity grenade. It's five times smaller than the usual gravity mines, and five times as powerful. Using this on an ordinary human, or any other race other than a vampire, werewolf or giant would be grounds for turning said race to a meat paste. It would be overkill, but in this case I believe it was made just for you, don't you think."

This guy liked to talk, but if it was a fight he wanted then it's a fight he will get. I used shadow walk, falling into the monochrome world of the shadow realm. I made a move, hoping to come up from behind their leader, but just like with the grenade, a wide disc the size of man hole cover was placed at my original spot. It light up brightly and I felt a pulling force drag me out of the shadow realm, right at the spot I had used to leave. Now I was not just being assaulted by gravity ten times heavier than normal, I was unable to use Shadow walk and enter the Shadow realm. And it was only because of this disk that seemed to be scrambling my ability to jump into the shadow realm.

"And that little toy that has you stuck in one place is a dimensional displacement device, also know as a triple D. we use it when hunting fairies and pixies, because those things are quite tricky. They have this innate ability, just like you vampires to access and travel through an alternate plane or dimension. This device locks onto your magical signature and drags you out of the dimension at the point of entry, and it will keep you here, eliminating your ability to open and travel through any sort of dimension. So you see, we came prepared to deal with a vampire."

This was beyond ridiculous! I had trained hard for the better part of two weeks, only to find out that this group of people might have a counter for every move in my arsenal, well every move in my vampire arsenal anyway.

I got back up to my feet, much to the surprise of my assailants. Unfortunately for them I was much stronger than a vampire of my rank. Maybe at first I was shocked by the sudden increase in gravity, so I couldn't react properly, but now that I'm standing up, I realized that it wasn't so bad. Though my speed would definitely be affected, I could probably only move as fast as a well grained human now.

It was annoying because I knew I was capable of so much more, but my abilities as a vampire were not refined. It was like have a bottle of water, but rather than opening the cap, I punctured a tiny hole at the top of it. And it seems my so called training had only just scratched the surface.

"Seems to me like you're stronger than expected. Maybe even more so, but that's to be expected, you're no normal vampire after all. But none the less I would advice you not use your runes, or the pain you'll feeling would be to the depths of your soul. You're surrounded, and we're all wearing specially made suits that counteracts the bite force, allure and blood controlling abilities of a vampire. Also the suits are made with a specially synthesized Ionite metal, that would make the usage of all soul based abilities terribly painful. You're cornered, and your companion the lion, won't be able to help you."

The moment he finished speaking, I realized that I haven't even seen Soren since they encircled me. He was gone, I raised the blanket of darkness around me, as it seems completely useless at this point, giving that my enemies could see through it. But even then I couldn't find Soren around, not even a trace of him.

"Well if you're looking for your lion I'm afraid you won't be able to find him. He's been teleported at least a 100 kilometers away from here, which direction? I don't know, and I'm sure he wouldn't know either, so there's no way he would be able to find you and give you any help. Which brings us back to you surrendering, please don't make it hard on us, well on yourself really, because I'm sure I will enjoy beating the so called king of the vampires up."

These guys were already working my last nerve, especially this leader of theirs. I couldn't tell what they looked like because of the kind of armor they had on, so I had no face to direct my anger towards. But fine since they came prepared to capture a vampire, then what about a dragon.

"I've had it with your arrogant words and condescending remarks. I. Am. A. King! But I'm not just king of the vampires dimwit, I'm also King of the Dragons!"

One thing about anger is that it drives your body. Everything at the moment of rage and wrath becomes automatic, instinctive and primal. And it was even more so when a part of you could be somewhat considered a animal. Dragons weren't animals, they were a race of intelligent godlike beings, however they were also primal, sharing characteristics and mannerisms with animals, including moments of lust and anger. It's common knowledge that it's a bad idea to get a dragon upset, and these bozos are about to find out why.

I called out my armor and at the same time shifted into my half dragon form. Usually what comes next would be me summoning my sword and shield, but at this point I think being bested by two groups of people that normally shouldn't be able to touch had pushed me to the edge. So I just opened my mouth and roared, and just like a typical dragon, I spewed flames.

Now at the moment I knew I had control over two sorts of flames; my soul flames, and the golden flames of judgment that I had gotten when I defeated Shao Tie. When dragons fight each other, the loose always loose a part of their power to the winner. It's the same thing with weres. Creatures like werewolves, were tigers and the rest work under the same law. You take on a part of your opponent, as long as you defeat that person.

The flames flew our of my mouth in a jet of gold and intense heat, burning the ground beneath my feet black as the three forgotten ones that it came in contact with burnt to ashes in mere seconds. The flames came to a stop, and immediately I was being pelted by a hail of laser and plasma fire.

Using those golden flames had left me feeling a little bit drained, but I would not give up yet. I moved towards the leader of this group of mercenaries, but they were ready for my advance. Even with the death of three of their members, none of them were panicked, they kept their cool and kept their focus. Even though I was currently their target, I couldn't help but feel respect for their state of mind, of course that respect ended when a cannon was pointed at my face point blank.

"Shit!" *BOOoooOoooM!*

I was thrown backwards, rolling allover the ground rough and ragged like I had just jumped out of race care moving at 300 kilometers an hour. The right side of my helmet was melted into slag, and so was my face. At this point in my life pain was already a constant and well known companion. So I welcomed it and let fuel my rage and anger as I used my Aura to right myself, digging my feet into the ground as I brought my momentum to a halt.

I was already out of the encampment, and whatever trap they had laid…..or not. My attention was drawn to a beeping sound, or to be precise a lot of beeping sounds as I discovered that for almost a kilometer around me, mines had been buried in the ground, and they were about to blow.

I wasn't far enough from them to be able to use my soul energy and weave a rune, so I was left with no other option but to defend myself with my shield and Aura, and to be honest the future was looking bleak. And then the whole world exploded, one loud bang after the other.

I planted myself as solidly as I could so I wouldn't be thrown around by the explosion. I figured that once the mine I was standing on went off, it would throw me towards the closet mine within it's proximity, and that one would go off, and so would the next, and so on and so forth until I was completely out of the range of the mine field, and most probably dead or something.

These guys were more than just prepared, they knew I was coming and set up an ambush. Somehow they completely evaded detection from me, but I'm sure Dracula would have noticed, yet he didn't say anything. And because of that, I was here huddled on the ground as fire and shrapnel chipped away at my armor and ruined my skin underneath.

I was healing, and my armor was also regenerating, but it was unable to keep up with the explosion. My earlier deduction about each explosion being chained was correct, however they were still close enough that their damage would be wide spread enough to cover the previous point of ignition. Accounting for a scenario where I was able to resist being thrown around by the mines. These guys were smart, scarily so.

They had thought of everything, and even though they were caught of guard by my dragon form, they had expected that I might have some ace in the hole to get me out of tight spots. The universe was a lot more dangerous than I expected, and the battles on Shearath now seemed like child's play as opposed to the enemies outside the planet. The explosion settled down, and admits the smoke, flames and dust, I could hear them walking closer.

"I have to say Kael, you're as resourceful as the reports say you are. And it seems the rumors are through, you have some sort of dragon form. I wonder if there's anything still human about you. You've become a beast! Now methods for taking care of dragons don't exist…..well not officially or legally anyway, but it's there, somewhere out in the universe and within the galaxies. Problem is we couldn't get our hands on one of such methods, so we had to be creative, seems thinking outside of the box paid out."

I was feeling a little out of breath, I could deal with the pain, but after using those flames I've noticed that I've gradually gotten weaker and weaker. Odds are those golden flames are a lot more powerful than I thought, and I had missed my chance to use them properly. Now I could use my runes, I couldn't jump into the Shadow realm, and I was in a rather sorry state.

"I have to say, you were full of surprises, but fighting you was somewhat underwhelming and quite disappointing. I expected more from the Lion of Shearath. Oh well at least we've got you, and alive too, which means we get to bag a billion credits."

"And the fellowship thanks you for your contribution, be sure to tell your ancestors that the most prestigious gathering of men and women of great minds and abilities deemed you worthy to die by our hands. Kael Cor is ours!"

"Who invited the reptiles to this party!" one of the mercenaries finally spoke.

"This is no party fool, it's a funeral!"

And then all hell broke loose, and I was stuck right in the middle of it.

Chapter end